


Liquid Courage

by haplesshippo



Series: Death's Crossing [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Homestuck
Genre: Bro's language deserves a warning all on its own, Child Neglect, Dave's Bro's Bad Parenting, Desmond Miles needs a hug, Gen, Harry Potter runs a bar, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Master of Death Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 09:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14053743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haplesshippo/pseuds/haplesshippo
Summary: It isn’t often that Harry truly gets to know his customers in Death’s Crossing, but sometimes there are one or two customers whom he’ll remember, who’ll remind him of when he was alive.





	Liquid Courage

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, yes, I do realize there are other things I should be working on. But I also wanted to finish this one. The characters are a little more…niche? I guess. At least, I don’t think the Homestuck, Assassin’s Creed, and Harry Potter fandoms often see much interaction with each other. Regardless, I was having Desmond feelings, so here we are. Here’s the second installment of Death’s Crossing!
> 
> Warnings for discussions of childhood abuse and neglect. Also, Bro’s language itself deserves all the warnings.

Harry Potter, as deathless as he was, did not, in fact, have limitless patience.

“But _how do you know_ ,” the woman pressed.  “I’ll go to heaven, right?”

“Ma’am, there’s no heaven or hell, only the Beyond,” Harry explained, as patiently as he could, for the seventeenth time.

“What’s in the Beyond?”  She stirred her appletini nervously.  “I’ve been good all my life, and I never committed a crime.  I’ll have a good afterlife, right?”

“Yes, you will.  You’ll meet all your friends and family again,” Harry reassured.  He felt a pressing need to take a shot right now.  He’d already spent too long reassuring this woman that no, she wasn’t going to hell, and yes, it would be painless, and really, would she just get a _move on_?  “I promise, as your bartender, that you have nothing to worry about.”

“You _swear_?”

It wasn’t that Harry didn’t understand how frightening death was.  He knew, far too familiarly, what it felt like to be faced with death, to stare it straight in the face and know he wouldn’t be coming out on the other side again.  So he could appreciate why the woman was so scared.

It was just, his own death had happened a millennia ago, and dealing with hysterical women had never been his forte.

“ _Yes,_ ” Harry stressed.  “There’s nothing at all frightening in the afterlife.”

The woman gathered her coat and sniffed pointedly.  “No need to be short with me, young man.  I’ll have you know that I’ve lived to a ripe old age, and I don’t lose my temper with others.  You shouldn’t either.”

Harry felt a very visceral urge to kick the woman out the door.  “Thank you for visiting Death’s Crossing.  Have a safe journey.”

“Safe?  What do you mean safe?  Will there be danger?!”

Harry cursed at himself.  Careless, stupid…  “No.  But if you do stay any longer, you might not be able to cross over at all.”  This was, of course, a very big and blatant lie, but she didn’t need to know that.  Harry couldn’t actually force anyone out of the bar, but he could very strongly urge them out.

The woman’s eyes widened, and she hurriedly left with a jingle from the door.  Harry sighed in relief and washed her glass.

Perhaps he’d get some time before his next customer.  The door jingled again merrily, in defiance of Harry’s wishes.  No such luck.

“Welcome.”  The visitor had short brown hair, and he seemed to have the weight of the world hanging off his shoulders.  He wore a white hoodie with the hood pulled low over his eyes and the sleeves pulled halfway up his forearms, revealing tattoos extending from his left wrist and disappearing under white cloth.  “This is Death’s Crossing.  How may I help you?”

The man was all pent-up anger and energy, nervousness and regret, wrapped up in one package.  The sight of the bar made the man scoff, but he took a seat anyways.

“Gin and tonic.”  The man paused, and Harry waited patiently.  “Actually, just let me do it.”

Harry raised an eyebrow but surrendered the bar to the man as he leapt nimbly over the bar top and landed, silent as a cat, on the other side.  Harry whistled, impressed.  “Were you an acrobat?”

“A bartender, actually, just like you,” the man responded as he carefully poured out the gin over ice.  “At least this way, I’ll make it the way I like it.”

“My job’s to serve you,” Harry chided gently.  “Please let me do it.”

The man had the decency to look ashamed.  “Yeah, sorry, it’s been a while since I served anyone drinks.  I forgot how annoying demanding customers can be.  It’s just, I _really_ need a drink right now.”

Harry waved off the apology.  “No harm done.”

“My name’s Desmond Miles.”  The man stuck out a hand after topping the drink off with a slice of lime.

Harry shook it warmly.  “It’s nice to meet you, Desmond.  I’m Harry.”

“Harry?”

“Just Harry.”

The man sipped at his drink, scanning his surroundings carefully.  He seemed to relax more as he drained more and more of his glass.

“Where is this place?” Desmond asked.

Harry recited dutifully, “You’re at the crossing between life and death.  You are here because you still have something tying you to the living world, whether it be regret, love, or hatred.  My bar and I are here to assist you through your regrets so that you can pass on.”

“Dead, huh.  This isn’t a hallucination?”

“I’m afraid not.”  Harry began systematically cleaning each of his glasses so they shined again.

“Not the Bleeding Effect, then.”  Desmond looked relieved, but lurking beneath it was an edge of regret, longing, hurts and scars scabbed over.

“I don’t know what the Bleeding Effect is.”

Desmond laughed, an edge of self-deprecation lying underneath like a finely honed blade.

“I’m crazy, that’s what that means.  I would have been admitted to an asylum if I wasn’t too busy saving the world,” Desmond grinned, but there was no humor to his smile.  He tapped his temple.  “I’ve got other people crowded up in here.”

Harry hummed.  “I used to have another person in my head too.  It’s not pleasant.”

“No.  It’s not.”

Harry set down his glass and turned towards Desmond, making sure he sounded uncaring, nonchalant when he spoke.  “Well, I’m here to lend an ear and help you through you troubles before you move on.”

“Aren’t all bartenders supposed to do that?” Desmond shot back, his scarred mouth quirking upwards into an amused smirk.  “Listen to the drunken woes of all the poor bastards in the world?”

“I suppose so,” Harry answered.

Desmond reminded Harry of himself, back when he was a teenager and had too much on his shoulders and not enough experience to carry the burden.  Given the task to save the world by a higher power, faced with an enemy too strong and too influential, assaulted from the outside and from inside his head, scraping across the finish line by the skin of his teeth. 

Desmond just needed time and space, enough to get his thoughts in order, make peace with his death, accept his lot in life.  Harry knew what he needed, would go out of his way to provide that, because Harry was just like him once, and he only wished he had someone else to talk to then.

“I appreciate it.”  Desmond glanced up when the door jingled again, admitting a young woman who glanced around nervously. 

“Welcome to Death’s Crossing,” Harry said, and some tension leaked out of Desmond’s frame.

* * *

Desmond spent a long time with Harry, watching customers come and go, some angry and seeking revenge, some mournful and still clinging to life, some scared and fearful of the Beyond.

The young man made his customers laugh, put them in the spotlight and listened patiently as intoxicated souls rambled on and on, unloading their thoughts onto him.  Desmond was a listener, disliked attention just as much as Harry, but when he spoke, his words were often sardonic, cynical and mocking, but never failed to make his customers laugh. 

Harry felt kinship for the first time in a very long while.  He almost didn’t want Desmond to leave, but, well…

Harry lived in the afterlife, a crossroads between life and death.  All souls moved on eventually, and he knew Desmond would leave eventually.  It was his reality, and as lonely as that kind of existence was, Harry had gotten used to it.

Desmond was gleefully setting a cup of some alcoholic drink on fire, Harry looking tolerantly on as the light flickered across Desmond’s face, erasing some of the shadows and lightening the weary pulls at his eyebrows.  He was reminded of two other fire-loving individuals when they received their next customer.

The door chimed as a tall, blond man stepped through.  He wore a cap on his head, pointed sunglasses on his face despite the fact that it was never bright in Death’s Crossing, and a white shirt with a popped collar.  Peeking beneath his right sleeve was a truly horrendous tattoo.

“Welcome to Death’s Crossing,” Desmond welcomed, taking over Harry’s role easily.  Harry didn’t begrudge him of that. 

The man sat on a stool, leaking overconfidence and pride in every movement, but his face was blank as a slate.

“Give me a Natty Light,” the man said.  Harry’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t question the order.  Desmond, on the other hand, wrinkled his nose.

“Seriously, man?” he asked.  “We can serve you literally anything in the world, and you choose Natty Light?”

The newcomer’s lips curled tauntingly.  “You wouldn’t appreciate irony even if it hit you like a dump truck skidding down a road covered in lube, bro.”

Desmond’s eyebrows attempted to fly off his face.  “Irony? _What_?”

Harry set the can in front of the blond and watched as the man snapped the tab crisply and chugged half of its contents.

“How may I help you today?” Harry asked.  Desmond grumbled but crossed his arms and leaned against the bar top.

“No idea, bro, unless you got a puppet with a plump rump hiding around somewhere and are in the mood for some artistic cinematography involving said plump rump.”

“ _What_ ,” Desmond repeated, with more feeling, shifting backwards to get away from the strange man, “the _actual_ ever loving _fuck_?”

Harry merely shook his head.  He’d had strange customers before, and, well, while this guy was definitely one of his stranger ones, he was well used to the eccentricities of all kinds of people.  “We don’t keep puppets on hand.”

The man finished his beer and crumpled it in one hand.  When Desmond moved to retrieve another one, the man shook his head sharply.  “Nah thanks, bro.  Ethanol dulls my razor senses.  I need to be able to pull off all of my sweet moves and raps.”

Harry chuckled at Desmond’s bewilderment.  “I think this guy’s off his rocker more than I am, and that’s saying something,” Desmond breathed, disgust and wonder warring in his tone.

“ _This_ _guy_ has a name.  It’s Bro.”  The self-proclaimed Bro then tilted his head.  “I’m being incredibly more chatty than usual.  You got something in that beer to make me high as a kite and leak all my secrets like a geriatric leaks diarrhea into his diaper?”

Desmond threw up his hands.  “This guy’s crazy, disgusting, and probably a sociopath.  You sure you wanna entertain these kinds of guests?”

Harry shot Desmond a look and replied shortly, “I entertain anyone who needs help reaching the next life, regardless of whether they are saints or murderers.”

Desmond shut his mouth and sulked, and Harry turned back towards his customer.

“The next life?” Bro asked.  The dull bar lights flashed across his pointy shades dramatically.

“The Beyond, where souls pass on to after they die,” Harry clarified.  “You’ve died, and you’re passing this bar to find peace with yourself before you move on.”

Bro laughed.  “Crazy as that sounds, I believe you, man.  Last thing I remember, there’s this doggy asshole stabbing me through the chest like I’m made of I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-butter, and next thing I know, I’m in this trashy bar without even one puppet.”

“Sounds like an interesting way to die,” Harry commented, and Bro began his story, drawing Desmond reluctantly into it as well.

“See, bro, my lil bro, he’s this little shit who wants to be just like me, so being the gracious guardian that I am, I taught him the way of the blade while everyone else was off in school studying like a bunch of squares.  Taught him how to fend for himself, forage for food, weather the cruelty of the world.  I was an exemplary guardian, if I do say so myself.”

Here, Bro’s smirk looked painted on, like he’d rehearsed this a thousand times in front of a camera, all cocky bravado and no sincerity.

“And then the kid’s bucktoothed friend dragged him into some dumb game like we’re in some dumb ass RPG, except it went off the rails.  Instead of saving the world like some anime protag, they ended the world and made an invincible bad guy.  Being the exemplary big bro I am, I went after this bad guy to defend the kid’s honor like some fucking knight in shining blinding armor.  And then I die to this bad guy.  It was a pretty fucking awesome way to go.”

Desmond’s eyebrows had long ago tried to flee his forehead as the story progressed.  “What kind of world did you live in?”

“A shithole of a place in Texas,” was Bro’s noncommittal answer.  “You got any apple juice?”

Harry conjured a glass of apple juice for the man.

“So why are you here, then?  It seems you’re content with the way you died, and you did everything you could for your little brother.  No reason to linger around,” Desmond commented, leaning forwards.  “You got beef with the bad guy you want to settle?  Good luck with that, being dead and all.”

Bro shrugged.  “No idea, man.  I got as much a clue as you do.”

“You’re lying,” Harry said mildly.  He smiled when Bro slowly turned his head towards the bartender like some character out of a horror movie.  Fortunately for Harry, he’d faced down mass murders and actual, literal things out of nightmares.  No matter how ominous he was trying to be, Bro really couldn’t intimidate him.  “You know exactly why you’re here, you’re just not willing to admit it.”

“You’re delusional.  Ain’t nothing I regret,” Bro scoffed, smoothing his face over until it was a blank, featureless mask.  Harry recognized it as a defense mechanism.

Harry decided to let things lie.  Desmond did not. 

“Man, you’re so full of shit,” Desmond laughed.  “I can see it from miles away.  You’ve got a problem, but you’re not willing to admit it.”

“I highly recommend that you shut your mouth before I shut it for you,” Bro warned.  There was a _snick_ , and a katana made itself known as Bro produced it out of a small card.  Harry was delighted.  _More magic_!  “Or maybe I’ll open it so wide, when someone tells you to close it or you’ll attract flies, you’ll have no choice but to become the newfound home to a thousand little buzzing fuckers.”

“Try me, _Bro_ ,” Desmond breathed, and for the first time, the usually genial and calm man looked like he was itching for a fight.

Bro’s attack was blindingly quick, just a flash of metal glinting under the bar lights.  Desmond moved just as quickly, reaching up to defend with a blade that slid out from under his sleeve.  Upon further inspection, Harry found that the blade was strapped to the underside of his wrist by a series of leather buckles.

“Impressive,” Bro commented nonchalantly, despite the fact that there was a knife threatening to gut him open.

“Thanks.  You’re not the only one who studied the blade,” Desmond mocked.

Harry leaned backwards and cast a shield over his bottles of liquor.  Just because he could clean up his bar and restock the supplies within the blink of an eye didn’t mean he wanted to.

They were a blur of movement.  While Bro was a whirlwind of flashing steel, Desmond was sturdy as a rock, countering and blocking with the dexterity of a gymnast and strength of a boxer.  He deflected and parried easily, following up his movements with jabs that would have opened Bro stomach to mouth if the blond wasn’t fast enough.

Harry leaned his cheek against his fist and watched them, ready to intervene at a moment’s notice.  The last time there was a fight in his bar, he’d had to erase whole scores of burn marks from his walls and knife gouges in his nice wooden bar top.

“So how’d you learn those sick moves?” Bro asked as they broke apart.  There was a light sheen of sweat covering his skin, and Desmond’s breathing was heavier from their attempts at maiming each other.  “I’ve been itching for a good fight.  My lil bro isn’t a challenge, and the boss battle was so short I didn’t have time to enjoy it.  Since, you know, I died and all.”

Desmond was silent, for a while, and Bro patiently waited for the answer.  “My…ancestors taught me.”

“Ancestors,” Bro prompted, flinging his katana at a wall so that it stuck straight out and gesturing at Harry for a drink.  Harry gave him another Natty Light and internally resigned himself to repairing his wall, _again_.

“I had a unique family,” Desmond muttered as he also sat on a stool, for once a customer and not a bartender.  “I learned the Assassin’s Creed from a Syrian, learned how to fight from an Italian, and learned the strength of brotherhood and blood from a Native American.  Yeah, you could say my ancestry was pretty weird.”

Harry leaned forward in interest.  He had yet to hear even a tidbit of Desmond’s story, and if he was being honest, he was curious.  Bro, on the other hand, snorted.

“I didn’t ask for your life story.  I asked you where you learned how to _fight_ like a motherfucking ninja straight out of the land of the rising sun.”

“Assassin,” Desmond corrected idly.  “I didn’t willingly learn how to fight.  I had it all crammed into my head, and then I was forced to learn how to fight, or I’d have died.”

“Tch.”  Bro yanked his katana out of the wall and flicked it into the air, where it disappeared into the same digital card it had come from earlier.  “Trained young and trained good, just like my lil bro.”

Desmond leaned forward into Bro’s space, eyes flinty hard.  “ _Nobody_ should have to be trained like that, the way I was.  Nobody should be forced to learn how to fight and kill for survival.”

Bro shrugged.  “Dave turned out all right.  Not as good as me at the sword, but he learned to fend for himself at a young age.  Didn’t even have to bother feeding him after he turned five, probably because I’d been ambushing him since he could barely toddle about.  That’s what makes a man strong.”

“That’s called _child abuse_ and _neglect_ where I come from,” Desmond snarled.  Bro looked down at Desmond coolly.

“But you wouldn’t have survived without that family background, am I right?”

Desmond drew back.  “I hated my dad.  He forced me to learn how to fight before I knew _why_ , punished me when I wasn’t good enough and let me, as you say, fend for myself.  It’s not healthy for any kid to grow up like that.  I fucking ran away because of him.”

“Can’t say you’re like my lil bro, then.  He worshipped the ground I stood on,” Bro sneered.

“How much of that is because he wanted your approval, and how much of that is because you were actually a good parent?”

“Sounds like you’re projecting, bro.  Sure you don’t need to spend some quality time with your shrink?  Get some messed up Freudian psychoanalysis going on?  I know a broad, I can hook you right up.”

“Is that how you dealt with issues with your family?  Making callous jokes and not giving even the smallest damn about how your own _kid_ was doing?”

Bro’s mouth opened with a retort, but no sound emerged.  Sensing weakness, Desmond took another step until they were nose to nose, Desmond seething with all the words he couldn’t say to his father, all the years of built up resentment and anger and _yearning_ for recognition, for a family that he had never gotten.

“I was raised on a farm and expected to fight the moment I could stand.  My dad tried to teach me how to throw a knife and use a blade to _kill_ people, to fight a war I knew nothing about.  One half of me knew he was a horrible parent, the other half wanted him to _accept_ me.  I worked as hard as I could for the smallest scraps of his attention, and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I actually got the courage to run and leave it all behind.

“The only difference I see between me and your little brother are that I could actually escape, and he was stuck in some bizarre, fucked up stockholm syndrome situation!”

Desmond sucked in a breath, fists clenched and muscles straining under his hidden blade.  He was red in the face and trying to drill holes right through Bro’s shades.  Silence settled like razor wire, one wrong move threatening to cut them all to ribbons.

“Don’t you think I don’t know that?” Bro asked, quietly, dangerously, after a pause.  “You don’t think I knew that I was a shitty guardian?  Fuck you and the high horse you rode in on!  What do you expect from someone who just had a baby dumped on his head and was expected to take care of him?  I’m no fairy godmother, and no stork had the _right_ to give me a tiny, squishy little asshole for me to raise!”

“From the way you tell it, you didn’t even _try!_ You _abused_ him!”

“I tried!” Bro roared, his cool demeanor shattered and lying on the ground like diamond dust.  “But how the ever loving _fuck_ was I supposed to raise a kid when I was stuck making _plushie porn_ for money most of the time?  Being a parent isn’t all about prancing through flowers and unicorns shitting out rainbows!  I did the best I could in the circumstances I had.

“You think I’m not worried out of my _goddamned mind,_ knowing that my little brother is out there fighting some kind of furry, murderous psychopath with three other equally inexperienced kids so wet behind the ears they’re practically swimming in their own naivety?  That the last Dave’ll probably ever see of me is my limp, ragdoll body impaled like some kind of teen whore out of a porn movie on his own katana?”

Ragged breathes filled the air.  Harry was barely making sense of what, exactly, Bro was talking about, but childhood abuse and neglect, he mused grimly, weren’t so uncommon a story after all.

Bro snorted, trying to regain his cool and failing miserably.  “Fuck, I’m not drinking anything else you give me.  You sure you didn’t roofie your beverages, man?”

His attempt to lighten the atmosphere fell flat.  Desmond sat heavily on his stool, face shadowed under his white hood.

“Look, man.  I can’t change how I treated my lil bro.  We’re dead, it’s over,” Bro finally said.  He adjusted his pointed sunglasses with his middle finger.

Desmond breathed heavily from his nose.  “I know that.”

“And even though I know I was an abysmal, no good pseudo parent for the little twerp, I _did_ care about him, in a way,” Bro continued loudly.  “Cared enough to keep him alive and worry about how he’s doing even when I’m dead as a doornail.”

Harry cocked his head, and he could hear, just beneath the self-assured façade Bro was wearing like a second skin, the faintest trace of regret.

“And you know what the most fucked up part of all of this is?” Desmond asked quietly, half mourning for a relationship he could have shared with his father but hadn’t, half like a dawning realization and acceptance for something he’d been struggling with for a long time.  “Some part of me still loves my dad, despite all the shit he put me through.”

Bro grunted.  “…yeah. Bet your dad cared for you in his own fucked up way too.”  He paused, and then in a vulnerable voice, pink and soft like the underbelly of an armadillo, asked tentatively, “You think Dave ever…?”

Desmond looked at Bro, a failure of a parent who abused and neglected his own child but still cared for him, a man who was just as human as he was, and nodded.  “I think that he loved you too.”

Bro stared contemplatively at the bartop for a moment, Desmond fiddling with the leather straps of his hidden blade and Harry staying stock still, trying to let them work out their issues themselves.  When possible, Harry tried not to intervene. 

Abruptly, Bro pushed away from the bar with a violent huff.  He straightened his shoulders and rolled his neck.  “Well, I’m outta this dump.  Even though the fight was fun, there aren’t any puppets.  Was hoping Lil Cal would be around, but it seems even he can’t come to the afterlife.”

Harry cleared his throat, and both of them jolted in sudden reminder that, hello, yes, Harry was still, in fact, very much present. 

“You’re ready to go?” Harry asked mildly.

Bro adjusted his cap and smoothed out his sideburns.  “All this talk about feelings is giving me the hives.  Yeah, I think I’m ready to move onto the mysterious, shadowy horror-terror abyss that is the afterlife.  You sure there aren’t any eldritch tentacle monsters out there?”

“The Beyond,” both Harry and Desmond correctly simultaneously.  They exchanged looks.

“Right, well.  Appreciated the strife, man.”  He held out a hand towards Desmond, who stared down at it like it was an alien creature.  “Yo, ever heard of a handshake?  You wrap your meaty phalanges around mine, we shake them like a couple of vibrators, and then we abscond so that we never have the displeasure of meeting again.”

Desmond took the hand gingerly.  “It was…interesting.  Meeting you.”

Bro looked amused.  “Sure was, man.  Keep up the cool moves.  Oh, and next time you have to face your daddy issues, please don’t let the excrement hit the whirling ceiling fan.  I’m cool enough to deal with your tantrum, but others might not be.”

“Sure thing,” the bartender replied dazedly.

With a last salute, Bro whirled out of the bar.

Harry absentmindedly gathered a spilled glass of apple juice and vanished the cans of Natty Light.  Well, Bro had certainly been a one of a kind customer.

* * *

Desmond was, predictably, quiet after that.  His confession about his past had been quite a bit to unload, especially on two strangers, and since meeting Bro he had been more withdrawn, more contemplative.

Harry wasn’t quite sure if Desmond was ready to move on yet, and some shameful part of him hoped that Desmond would stay just a little while longer.

Customers came and went, and Harry counted the time by how many drinks they served, how many stories they listened to, how many tears were shed, and how many left behind their lives on their journey to the Beyond.  Desmond was the only permanent fixture, cleaning out glasses and performing flashy tricks for the souls who stopped for a bit of company.

Then, during one lull between customers, Desmond spoke, and Harry knew it was time to let go.

“You know, I hated my dad.  I hated what I was made to do.”

Harry set down the glass he was wiping and focused all of his attention on the Assassin.

“I had to save the world, you know?  Like, these precursor assholes thousands and thousands of years in the past decided that this guy, this poor schmuck who didn’t want anything to do with Assassins and Templars, who just wanted to live a normal life, this guy would be the one to save the world.  And the shittiest part is, I died doing it, and only three other people knew about it.  One of them was my dad, who always pushed and pushed and _pushed,_ like he didn’t even _care_ that he was exchanging my life for everyone else’s.  Like he didn’t notice he was pushing me to an early grave.  And a part of me wishes I had just turned away and left the world to burn.”

Harry, having learned how, exactly, Desmond liked his gin and tonic many drinks ago, poured one for him.

“You know, I was prophesied to save the world too,” Harry began mildly.  “People had expectations about how I was to live, people trained me to be a perfect little soldier, and people pushed me to do things I’d really rather had preferred not to do.”

Desmond shot him a surprised look.  “You were alive once?”  The moment the words left his mouth, Desmond winced.  “Sorry, that was rude.”

“No, it’s alright,” Harry replied, amused.  “It’s a common mistake.  People think that I’m some kind of timeless deity, but yes, I was human once too.  The world expected me to defeat this evil man, and all this weight was on an eleven year old’s shoulders.  I was completely out of my depth.  It’s a surprise, really, that I did end up saving the world with my friends.  Lived a full life afterwards, too.”

“At least you didn’t die,” Desmond commented bitterly into his drink.

“I did.”

Desmond looked up in surprise.

“I died,” Harry clarified, before almost sheepishly admitting, “and I came back to life.  I thought that the only way to save the world was to die, so I confronted my enemy and died at his hand.  It was the most terrifying moment in my life.”

“I expected to die too,” Desmond whispered, like this was some kind of deep, dark secret.  “I knew I was going to go out saving the world.  I accepted my death, but that doesn’t mean that I’m happy with what happened.”

Harry reached across the bar and grasped Desmond’s hands tightly.  He said, fiercely, “And it took great courage for you to do so.  I was lucky enough to come back to life, but I know how you felt.  The fact that you decided to give up your own life, the fact that you gave humanity a second chance in exchange for yourself, speaks volumes about the kind of person you are.  It’s not your father, not your background or your experiences, that makes up your character, but the choices you make.  You’re not defined by your past.  You’re a good man, Desmond.”

Desmond’s shoulders fell, like Harrys validation had been all he’d been seeking.  The lines in his face smoothed out, and he collapsed like a balloon, like all the buzzing worries in him had been let out by Harry’s words.

“I think that’s all I needed to hear,” Desmond confessed.  “That I made a difference, that despite my shitty childhood and mediocre life, I led a life worth living.”

“You did,” Harry said with the same certainty that the sky was blue, that birds flew and fish swam, that a compass pointed north.

Desmond smiled, this time a genuine one, one that radiated warmth and gratitude and a kind of spirit Harry had never seen before.  “I think I just needed…time.  To come to terms with everything that happened to me.  I was in a bad place when I died, and the bar gave me space and time to think and work out everything.  Talking to Bro let me come to terms about my dad, and the bar gave me time to process my death.  I think…”

“It’s okay for you to be selfish and move one.  You’re ready to go,” Harry finished for him, a bit sadly.  Desmond had been good company, truly one of the more memorable ones.

“I think I am.”

Harry began to withdraw his hands, but Desmond gripped them back tightly.  With a hard yank, Desmond pulled Harry over the countertop and hugged him tightly.

“Thank you for everything.  You’ve helped.  A lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry replied warmly, returning the hug.  “I’m glad you’ve resolved your problems.  It’s okay to move on now.”

“Yeah, I think it is.”  Desmond pulled back and straightened his hoodie.  He looked regretfully at the door.  “I’ll miss you.  It was an honor working with you.”

“And you.”

Desmond started towards the door, but as he laid a hand on the handle, he turned back.

“Hey, Harry?”

“Yes?”  Harry looked up from where he was arranging the bottles behind the bar so that all the labels were facing outwards.

“All that stuff you said about me?” Desmond grinned, the movement stretching the little scar at his mouth and wrinkling the skin around his eyes.  For once, he looked carefree, happy, relieved.  “That goes to you too.  You’re a good man.”

And with that final parting comment, Desmond left Harry alone again.

Harry huffed.  It had been so long since he’d thought about family, about abuse and neglect, about self-sacrifice, and the bravery it took sometimes to face his enemy head on and have the courage to fight.  So long since he’d thought about when he was alive.

The bell jingled, and Harry turned back to greet his customer with a smile at his lips and an empty spot by his side.

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie, I’m not quite sure what kind of closure I was aiming for with Desmond. With Bro, I just wanted him to come to terms with the fact that he was, truly, a shitty parent, and with Desmond I wanted him to be able to accept his past, get some closure, and gain some reassurance that he was a good person, despite his horrible circumstances.
> 
> Anyways, reviews and comments are welcome, as always, and thank you for reading! If you wanna talk, come hang out with me on Tumblr, also at haplesshippo. I don't post often, but I'll try to answer all the asks! 
> 
> Sincerely,  
> haplesshippo


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